


Where the Path of Cinders Leads

by BirdWhistle



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Genre: Character Death, Clueless Approach to Friendship, Detective Work, Enemies to Friends, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, HUH?!, M/M, Potential Romance, Reluctant Partnerships, Revenge, Where is the Line Between Friendship and Romance Huh?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29527008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BirdWhistle/pseuds/BirdWhistle
Summary: There is death after death, it turns out. And death before it, too. A group of not-exactly-human individuals learn this the hard way.No one is safe. But strength can be found in the strangest of bonds. And comfort, too.
Relationships: Viago/Original Female Character., Viago/Original Male Character
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	1. The Killings

  


“I’m Lydia. This is Clara. She’s my sister.”

The three vampires nod. Clara waves, not wanting to shake their hands. Vampires are so cold, and she imagines their hands to be unpleasantly clammy, more so than ordinary men. Witches do not, as a rule, get involved with vampires. As a matter of fact, un-human creatures rarely interact.There have been occasional romps at The Unholy Masquerade; Lydia even eyes one of them, the one with many tattoos, almost suggestively. Almost.

Clara knows the urge to get one’s mind off a traumatic event with quick fucks in dark corners. Lydia might indulge; the vampire with all the tattoos also regards her with what under the circumstances would pass for playful interest. But it’s hard to be playful when you’re nearly consumed by grief.

She doesn’t know who they lost; she doesn’t know how much Lydia has disclosed about their own loss. But they all share the unmistakable scowl of deep sorrow. Even playful tatted vampire. They all stand outside the vampires’ lair, a big, grim-looking house.

“Please, come in.”

The one who extends the invitation has big, brown eyes and is dressed like an aristocrat. Clara and Lydia follow them inside, and Clara notices how clean it seems to be. Not to say vampires are all filthy swines, but they aren’t precisely known for their tidiness. They sit in what seems to be a parlor, and the brown-eyed fancy one speaks again.

“We have beer, if you’d like.”

Clara raises an eyebrow. Why the hell do vampires have beer? Do they get a lot of visitors?

“We are friends with a pack of werewolves, and they like beer.”

Ah. Her facial expressions are too transparent for her liking. “Yes, I’d like one. Please.” Lydia nods in agreement.

The aristocrat vanishes into the kitchen, and they look at the remaining vampires. Somebody has to start asking questions, and it seems the chatty one of the bunch is away, taking awfully long opening two fucking beers. Clara decides to plunge into the abyss.

“Who was killed? A roommate, I presume. A brother? A long-time friend?”

The long-haired vampire with the quizzical brow answers. “A friend. A dear friend. For nearly two hundred years.”

Clara takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes, exhales and eyes the tattooed vampire.

“I’ve only been a vampire for a couple of years. Petyr turned me. He also turned Deacon, our friend. The one who…”

That makes sense. His clothes are far too modern, and vampires tend to stick to what they know; his friends are proof of that. Speaking of, Mr. Fancy Pants finally arrives with those beers. He poured them into tall glasses, and Clara wants to smile, but she can’t. She physically can’t. She wonders if she’ll ever smile again.

The vampire sets the tray on the table and sits next to his long-haired friend. Perhaps a proper introduction is in order. “What are your names?”

The tatted vampire speaks. “I’m Nick. This is Vladislav, and that’s Viago.”

Viago is the fancy one. Vladislav is the quizzical one. Deacon’s the dead one.

“We lost—“ she stops herself. They didn’t lose her; she was ripped from them. “Our sister was killed. Stella. Stella was killed.” 

Lydia breaks into tears. Clara feels them deep behind her eye sockets, threatening her with a deluge of despair. She turns them into rage, into bloodlust. She will mourn Stella after she has ripped the heart out of whatever creature murdered her. She takes Lydia’s hand in hers, twining their fingers. Lydia’s crying slowly subdues; she wipes her tears and her snot with her sleeve and takes a deep breath.

The vampires… they do not appear unfazed by Lydia’s sudden outburst; rather, they seem to struggle to distance themselves from it, lest it touches them and makes them break down as well. Vladislav’s brow becomes more severe, but his green eyes are empathetic. Viago looks tremendously desolate, as if he were alone in this parlor. Not alone: with a man-shaped blood pool on the floor, where his eyes are currently fixed. Nick’s head hangs low, so Clara can’t see his expression.

She speaks again. “As you know by now, there have been others. Deacon was the third vampire. Stella was the second witch. Two werewolves have been found with the same fatal injury. It’s a pattern, or it seems to be. We asked around, and zombies and demons haven’t been struck yet. But they might be next.” Clara ends her statement with a shrug. It’s ridiculous how little they know. No one has seen anything. They have all stumbled upon a bloodied body, an unrecognizable symbol, and nothing else.

Viago clears his throat. “Perhaps we could… team up. None of us is an investigator, as far as I know. But what else can we do? I see no other choice but to put whatever abilities we have into… an investigation. A search. A hunt. Whatever you want to call it. It’s a threat, and it must be neutralized. And the dead must be avenged.”

They all look at him, each with a varying degree of surprise. Clara would have never expected that kind of talk from a dandy vampire. But he’s right. That’s why she and Lydia are here.

“We could work in pairs. You said you are friends with a werewolf pack, would they be willing to help?” They nod. Vladislav speaks after what feels like ages.

“I could work with Stu and Anton; Nick could work with Lydia, and Viago with Clara. If we combine our skills, we might be more successful.” It’s reasonable.

“You mentioned another vampire. Peter? Would he join us?”

They all look down. _Oh no_.

“Petyr’s dead. It happened around the time Nick was turned, so it’s unrelated.”

“Why are you so sure?” Lydia asks. “Maybe this asshole was testing the waters. Folks like us aren’t killed every day.”

“Because the vampire hunter was also killed in the incident.”

Great, their very first dead-end. Clara gets the feeling they will encounter a lot of those. “Okay, I like that idea. Before we split up, we should tell each other everything we know. Then we could start retracing their steps. Everyone on board with that?”

The vampires nod for what feels like the nth time. It was going to be a long night.

  


They usually go out together, but not always. That night Deacon stayed behind with Stu, who was teaching him to download movies onto the modest laptop he had bought. Stu left some time after midnight to meet with a friend. When Viago and Vladislav returned, they found Deacon —what was left of him— on the kitchen floor. They knew it was Deacon because, among the blood and goo, they saw the sweater with the sunrise pattern.

“I hadn’t seen a staked vampire before. I knew what happened, but I… I had never seen it.”

Viago speaks softly, chin buried in his scarf. Clara knows it isn’t a scarf, but it’s not like she can ask what it’s called.

“I’ve seen several.” Vladislav’s accent is thicker than Viago’s. “I have even staked one or two vampires myself. But these vampires were enemies, or mere acquaintances. To see a friend like that…”

Clara allows the silence to grow longer. Lydia breaks it.

“Where were you?” She asks Nick.

“At a pub. Weekends are great for finding victims.”

Clara shudders. The thought of helpless women shivering under the cold weight of a blood-sucking creature makes her sick. But she knows she has a better chance of finding whoever killed Stella if she works with the vampires and the werewolves. At least the latter don’t eat people.

Her gaze meets Viago's, who eyes her with suspicion. He seems to be the intuitive one of the bunch; while awfully polite, he watches her with tremendous caution. Clara doesn’t exactly boast her contempt for vampires, but she doesn’t conceal it, either. Vladislav is too self-involved to notice; Nick is too naive.

But she cannot deny that their grief is just as real as her own, and Lydia’s. Recounting what they saw when they got home that night… Viago is also the most transparent with his emotions, and the pain of losing a friend in such a gruesome way is evident on his features. Is that what she looks like? Is her face ashen and wilting, too? She hasn’t looked in the mirror in days. She showers in the dark; she brushes her teeth with mechanical motions in front of the flat surface of her bedroom closet. Is this what being undead feels like?

  


They managed to establish a timeline of the killings.

The werewolves Viago had mentioned stopped by, so they were able to gather the approximate time of death of each individual. First, two newbie vampires who lived together. Then, a witch. Then a young werewolf. Deacon was next. After him it was Stella, and finally a werewolf who lived alone.

“As far as we know, Stella only knew Kaia, the other witch. I assume the werewolves knew each other as well.”

Anton nods. “Yeah. Luke wasn’t part of my pack, but we knew him. There are fewer werewolves than vampires and witches in this city.”

They had yet to determine if Deacon knew the other vampires. Vladislav didn’t think so. “I cannot claim to know every acquaintance of my friends’, but I would say our circle is quite small. Nick is the newest addition. There is another vampire who is relatively close to us, but she left the city… a year ago, maybe?” His question is directed at Viago, who nods and says “Yah, yah.”

“Jackie was Deacon’s familiar for a while, but was turned by Nick. Her husband —ex-husband says she lives in Auckland, now.”

Ex-husband? Do vampires have family courts? Clara is fucking exhausted. She hasn’t slept in four days, and being in this big, creepy house makes her feel uneasy. She now wishes she hadn’t drunk that beer. What are the chances of these creatures having coffee? The notes on her phone are starting to blur together. It seems like her severe lack of sleep is starting to catch up with her.

“We’re gonna go home now.” She turns to her designated partner. “We could visit the young werewolf’s flat tomorrow night.”

Tasks had been assigned to each group. Vladislav, Stu and Anton will interview friends and families of the victims. Lydia and Nick will look into the “anti-supernatural” circles that are known to host vampire hunters and the like. Clara and Viago will check out the victim’s places.

She hasn’t stepped in Stella’s flat since her death. Fleur, her ex-girlfriend, had moved out shortly before Stella was killed. Fleur was a witch, too, and Clara believed their breakup would be temporary. Those two were madly in love. Now, Fleur is heart-broken _and_ grief-stricken. Clara will need to check on her, but she fears she won’t be of any comfort. Lydia is her only priority now.

“Yes, that sounds good,” Viago murmurs.

Vladislav had said that their chances of success increased by teaming up. Clara agrees, in theory. But she also fears her misgivings about vampires might torpedo her efforts.

Viago seems nice enough, yes. Passive, even. Yet she notices the distinctive stiffness of trepidation in his stance. She must look exactly the same.

“Let me show you guys out.”

Lydia walks next to him. “I like your coat.”

“Thank you. It has to be around… ten times your age.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Oh, early twenties, for sure.”

He’s right on the money. Clara still sees Lydia—and all of her ridiculous friends— as children. Barely out of their teens.

“How old are you?”

Viago squints as he opens the front door. “Almost four-hundred.”

“Whoa. You’re ancient.”

Clara sees Viago’s soft smile. Lydia has that effect on people. She’s bright and warm, like the early morning sun. She managed to make a tiny crack in Viago’s sullen face. If it weren’t for Lydia, she would have sunken into a never-ending void of hopelessness.

“Bye! Lydia says. “We’ll stay in touch.”

She does the Star Trek salute thingy. Viago’s look of utter confusion makes Lydia giggle. Clara holds onto that sound with all of her might. Lydia’s all she has left.

Lydia and the need to find Stella’s killer and let all of the hurt and fury she has inside finally come out.

  



	2. The Investigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They play detective, but the results are... underwhelming.

  


His name was Christopher. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and was, according to Anton, sweet and gentle. His flat was spacious and with dashes of luxury; he made a decent living as an engineer.

Viago doesn’t remember what kind. He eyes the dried blood on the floor. Christopher had been mauled to death, which gave his demise a bitter irony. The flat is a little gloomy; neither he nor Clara need light to work.

They don’t speak much, either. To say Clara is wary of vampires is an understatement: she keeps her distance, as if he were a dangerous animal that could strike at any moment. Viago lacks the energy to show her how misguided her impression is.

He wonders if Nick and Lydia approach their partnership the same way. He thought he saw a flicker of sexual interest between them; perhaps it makes their association more tolerable. Viago knows the dulling nature of sordid encounters firsthand: there is a certain bartender who is quite familiar with his grunts of pleasure, more so since Deacon’s murder.

“Notice anything?” Clara doesn’t turn to speak.

“He didn’t have many things, but he was tidy.” He sees her nod.

“The killer caught him in a crescent moon. And your friends aren’t exactly the antagonistic kind, not while in human form, at least. Christopher…” She stands by the blood stain. “He tried to appease. The killer let him. They let him have hope. And then they killed him.”

Viago closes his eyes as tightly as he can. Deacon would have never tried to appease. Deacon went down fighting, he knows it. “Did Deacon try the same tactic?”

Clara finally turns toward him. Her face is half in shadows, but he can see the sickly paleness of her skin and the dark circles under her eyes. She hasn’t gotten any decent sleep since her sister’s death, that’s for sure. Her dark hair blends into the gloom. He wants to turn on a light; the darkness is starting to feel oppressive.

“No. Deacon was caught off guard. He was staked from the back.”

A cowardly attack. He didn’t even get to see the face of his killer. For reasons he cannot pinpoint, Viago deems that much worse. He walks toward Clara and switches the light on. She closes her eyes and lets out a trembling sigh.

“Aren’t there sleeping potions?”

She tilts her head to the right. “We don’t make potions. We don’t wear pointy hats, either.”

“What do you do, then?”

She shrugs, but doesn’t answer. He doesn’t insist. The only ability she has showcased so far is to see things. Past events. She can see them dying. No: she can see them getting killed. Viago wonders what’s that like. He has seen the life go out of many, many eyes. But _he_ was the culprit. He was, for those individuals, their personal grim reaper. Seeing deaths you haven’t caused must be much more macabre.

“How did Stella die?”

Clara stops walking around the flat. “Her heart was ripped out.”

Viago shudders. He has killed many, yes. He has been careless sometimes. Clumsy, too. But he has never been cruel.

“I’m sorry. That must have been a horrible thing to see.”

Clara says nothing. She is still standing right where she stopped, next to a ceiling-high bookshelf. “You’ve never done it?” She says it so casually. As if she were asking if he’s never been to the beach.

“There are easier, less vicious ways to kill someone.” _Less messy too_ , he thinks, but he keeps that one to himself.

Clara resumes her pacing. “Can you kill a vampire like that?”

“I’m sure you can kill anything like that.”

She hums. “Funny, ain’t it? I mean, you’re dead. Your heart doesn’t beat. So how come you can kill a vampire by stabbing them in the heart? That’s like killing someone by stabbing the necrotic tissue in their leg or something.”

Her words are harsh, but sensible. Viago decided a long time ago that attempting to figure out the mechanics of undead creatures such as himself is a fruitless task. It still stings, however. To be perceived as less than human. As human-adjacent. And that’s the best case scenario. Clara perceives him as monstrous. He’s a deformed thing in her eyes.

“I don’t have an answer to that question.”

She has taken a book off the shelf and is flipping through the white pages. It’s a volume on Mathematics.

“Do you have a profession?”

Clara shrugs. It’s the second time she has done it. She reads for a few more seconds before answering. “I’m a translator.”

That sounds dreary, much like Clara herself. She goes into Christopher’s bedroom, and comes out less than a minute later. “No windows in there. Smart.”

The flat only has one big window, in the kitchen. Big enough to allow an adult human to come in and out. Clara stands in front of it. “They came in through the window, but left out the door. Risky, considering the three other flats on this floor.”

Viago frowns. “Maybe the neighbors knew the killer. If they were so unconcerned with being seen, there must have been some semblance of familiarity.”

Clara nods, but she is frowning, too. “Then why come in through the window? If Christopher knew the killer, they could have just knocked.”

An answer eludes him. He gets the feeling he will always be short on those.

“Ready to leave?”

Clara is standing by the front door. He takes one last look around. Who would have thought a werewolf would be so fastidious?

“Yeah.”

He follows Clara out of the flat. Her hair is a deep chestnut brown with coppery hues. Before, in the dark, it had looked raven-black. Does she have a familiar? He could see her having a raven as a familiar.

“Witches are often portrayed with familiars. Do you have one?”

He watches the glossy hazel of her hair as she nods. She’s standing across from one of the three other doors.

“A cat.” She turns before he speaks. “Not black. Orange. His name is Dante.”

Viago can’t help but smile, even if he knows Clara will not reciprocate. “A peculiar name for a witch’s cat.”

“Maybe I should get a female cat and name her Beatrice.”

To her credit, her little joke lacks the surly tint all of the words that come out of her mouth generally have. She knocks on the door, and a middle-aged man answers. He looks at Clara, then at him.

“Yes?”

“Hey. Have you seen Chris? He asked me to come by to pick up some things but he doesn’t answer.”

“You mean Christopher? No, actually, I haven’t seen him in a couple of days. Are you his ex-girlfriend?”

Viago doesn’t like the way he says the last word. It sounds off-putting. He cannot see Clara’s face, but he is one hundred percent sure she’s scowling at this man. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

The man stops leering —that’s what he’s been doing since he opened the door and saw Clara, leering— and looks at Viago, fright visible in his features.

“Get back inside.”

The man obeys. Clara turns around. Her eyes, big and the same color of her hair —the exact same shade, weird— have a rather malicious gleam.

“Ugh. Let’s try the other neighbors and hope they aren’t creeps.”

They aren’t creeps, but they have no information either. The old lady who lives next door saw him the night he was murdered as he came home from work, but that’s it. Clara sighs in frustration.

Viago feels tired. He has felt tired since the night they found Deacon. Has he slept? He cannot recall. He should pay the bartender a visit. It won’t make him feel rested, but it might dial down his anxiety. The bartender has a way of touching him that makes Viago feel… not less lonely, but less immaterial. Less prone to be forgotten. Deacon will be remembered for as long he and his friends live. The prospect of the many centuries ahead of them exhausts him more.

  


They regroup at the house. Vlad and Anton spoke with Beth, Christopher’s sister. They didn’t see each other often, due to their jobs, but they did talk frequently. As far as she knew, Christopher didn’t have enemies. He was appreciated in his company and in his pack. He never got in any trouble.

Anton already knew all of this, but he needed confirmation.

“Do his colleagues know he’s dead?”

“Yeah. Beth talked to his superior, told her he’d had a heart attack, that heart failure runs in the family.”

“Is Beth a werewolf too?”

Anton shakes his head. “Only men can be werewolves.”

Clara suspected as much. “Why’s that?”

She likes Anton. Despite the current solemnity of his brow, he seems like a kind-hearted man who tries to see the good in people, and who tries to enjoy whatever life has to offer. Or maybe she just likes his red hair and scruffy beard. She would be up for a quick fuck behind this creepy house, if he asked. Maybe _she_ will ask.

“I don’t know the reason, to be honest. All I know is that it’s passed down from father to son.”

Maybe because nobody likes women who can become angry and savage. Women who can become monstrous and kill everyone in their path.

Anton looks at her, expecting a reply. She gives him none, but perhaps she doesn’t need to. Perhaps he’s more intuitive than she gives him credit for.

“What did you guys find?”

Vladislav is addressing Lydia and Nick. They shake their heads, and Lydia speaks.

“Nothing so far. Most of these people suspect the existence of vampires and witches and stuff, but they have no evidence. They still think goth kids are into satanist stuff. I mean they are, I guess, but that’s just goths being goths.”

“What are goths?”

Lydia looks at Vladislav with wide eyes. Anton scoffs, and Nick and Viago look at Lydia expectantly.

“They’re, uh, a subculture with a specific aesthetic and taste. Nothing to worry about. You’d fit right in, my guy.”

Vladislav smiles, smug. He then turns to Clara. “And you?”

“Nothing. Christopher may or may not have known the killer. They entered through a window and exited through the front door. No one saw anything.”

The discontentment is palpable. Granted, they have only begun their “investigation”, and their expectations weren’t high. It’s still a little disheartening to have absolutely nothing.

Is the killer human? That seems, at first glance, the most probable scenario. But they cannot be certain. It’s also likely that a vampire hunter managed to gather a lot of information and began a systematic hunt. But why kill witches and werewolves? Are they dealing with some sort of zealot?

It’s not a sentiment she can share with this crowd, but she understands the reasoning of vampire hunters. She would go berserk too if some undead thing killed someone she loved to eat them. But werewolves keep to themselves. Their main victims are forest critters, and only when there’s a full moon.

Witches simply don’t kill. They do not steal children and use their blood to keep themselves young, nor do they offer human sacrifices to evil entities. They have no connection to whatever dwells in the hot caverns below their feet and animates the demons that walk in their midst. Even demons are less brutal than whatever killed her sister.

 _There are easier, less vicious ways to kill someone_. Clara was only half-listening to Viago in that flat; while she doesn’t find him outright repellent, she finds it difficult to tolerate his proximity: he’s like a human-shaped draft. His words, however, echo in her head.

Ripping someone’s heart out is an extremely violent act. That type of violence tends to have passion behind it. It’s vehement in its cruelty. So perhaps they are indeed dealing with someone who loathes the existence of people like Stella and Christopher and Deacon, and wants to annihilate them all.

And anyone in this room could be next.

  



	3. Puzzle Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More and more questions arise.

  


Perhaps it would have been wiser for Clara and Anton to team up. Viago may not be as sexually aggressive as Vladislav, but he has always been rather quick to notice… affinities of the sensual kind. There was a flare of understanding between Clara and Anton when they were talking the previous night. It was like watching two people spot each other in the distance, then wave.

He liked that. It’s always nice to witness a genuine connection, however brief. And it made Clara a little less severe. Viago cannot hold her steely demeanor against her, though. Lydia knows better than to get in her sister’s way; she is, in fact, abiding in her path of revenge. Cause it is Clara’s path.

“She’s the one who found her, y’know?”

Viago had let the sisters know they could help themselves to beer and other beverages. Stu had brought coffee. They bumped into one another in the kitchen; Lydia was sniffing a bottle of blood.

“So does blood type matter or what.”

Viago shakes his head. “Not really. There are vampires who have a preference, but it’s like preferring one brand of bottled water to another.”

“How about sex? Age? Ethnicity? Number of sexual partners?” She wiggles her eyebrows at the last one.

Viago chuckles. “None of those factors affect the taste, which is all that matters. Although natural blondes have a certain tartness to them.”

Lydia chuckles too. She’s a brunette, like her sister. While Lydia has softer features, Clara’s hair is glossier, more… lush. They had a chat in the kitchen, and Viago learned that she never saw Stella’s mutilated body. Clara didn’t let her.

“She was your sister too.”

Lydia nods. “Yes, but Clara must have known that I didn’t want to see her like that. I just didn’t. And I’m glad she didn’t let me.”

“How does she cope?”

“She doesn’t. She has all this rage inside her, so you’d better stay back when she finds this killer or you’ll be collateral damage.”

“Noted.”

Viago doesn’t doubt the veracity of Lydia’s words. He may not like Clara, but he respects her tenacity. Vengeance is not a noble endeavor by any means, but it takes a tremendous amount of strength. And a tremendous amount of wrath.

When Katherine married that man, he was so, so angry. He hated her, he cursed her and the family she would have with that asshole. She had claimed to love him, and that love turned to vinegar in his mouth. It soured him, his heart, his blood. He wanted revenge, he wanted it as badly as he had wanted her.

It would have been so easy. Humans are weak and helpless. He could have killed them both with very little effort. He would have killed him first, so she could watch the man she loved die before her eyes.

And then he saw the way he looked at her. And the way she looked at him. Viago witnessed true devotion in their union, authentic, undiluted love. Something cracked inside of him. Unfathomable pain replaced red-hot fury. He let them be. He knew revenge would only deepen the hollowness in his bones.

Katherine had found happiness. It was only many years later that he was able to find comfort in that thought, but he cannot say he ever fully recovered. His memories of that time have become hazy; he can only remember how being in love with her felt, and only because he hasn’t felt that way again. Watching her from afar sparks a glimmer of that feeling, but it’s faded, like her photograph.

Clara’s heartbreak is different: it’s raw and unyielding. He pictures it like being swallowed whole by a void that’s simultaneously frigid and scorching. His own ache is acute, yes. However, and he cannot fathom why, he doesn’t feel the same rage she does.

He wants to find Deacon’s killer, and he wants them to suffer the same fate. But he’s not sure he would have had the initiative to look for them if it weren’t for Lydia and Clara. And Lydia herself admits to being a mere abettor. She hurts, but she doesn’t seethe. She doesn’t rampage.

Viago is curious as to why, but thinks it inappropriate to ask, at least so soon. Maybe he’ll ask her when this is all over. When Clara has a still-beating heart in her fist. A pyrrhic victory, perhaps. It certainly won’t fill the human-shaped emptiness in their chests.

  


  


The flat is a mess. The vampires who lived here didn’t have a Viago in their midst. Clara has learned that the vampires have a chore wheel; it was Deacon’s responsibility to do the dishes. With Deacon gone, Viago washes the dishes every single night, obsessively scrubbing off the blood.

Clara caught him in the middle of it when she went to the house to pick him up, his hands inside pink rubber gloves, his brow furrowed in concentration. She gave Vladislav a puzzled look, but he just shrugged and walked away. Deacon’s death seems to have brought them together, but only to do the necessary work to solve his murder and to keep them from being the next target. It doesn’t seem to have strengthened their bond, the one Clara knows is there, despite Lydia’s disbelief.

“Bond? I bet these dudes’ idea of bonding is gang-banging a succubus.”

Clara scoffed, mainly because the thought of Viago partaking in a gang-bang was hysterical. She doesn’t know his inclinations nor is she interested in knowing, but she would bet a hefty sum that group sex isn’t one of them. She also suspects he doesn’t like fucking other supernatural beings. Or that he doesn’t like fucking at all.

She’s not a shrink, but she gets the impression that Viago is not terribly fond of being a vampire. There’s a tinge of slight self-loathing in his words, in his movements, in the way he carries himself. Being a vampire is for him is, above all else, a chore, and he addresses it as such.

Viago looks around, clearly disgusted. Clara wants to put on the latex gloves she has in her bag, but her sensory input is far sharper if she touches things directly. Three vampires lived here. Two are dead, one is in hiding. She managed to escape because the killer was busy with the other two. She turned into a bat and flew out the window.

So the killer has no way of chasing his targets through the air. They have to catch them unguarded, before they get the chance to transform. Clara touches the walls, trying to elicit more feelings, more insight. Why didn’t the killer get all three at once? Even if they don’t transform to escape, the third one might attack them. And then she sees it.

It’s a blanket stained by food and huh, bodily fluids. And blood, lots of it. She fishes it out from under the sofa. Whoever was staying with the girls was using it. Were they sleeping under the sofa? The flat, while small, has two bedrooms, each with its coffin.

“Clara.” She turns to Viago, who is holding a picture frame. There are two women on the picture, smiling, their fangs stubby, like Nick’s. The tenants.

“Someone was crashing with them. The killer only expected two vampires. That’s why she was able to get away.”

Viago nods. “The question is: who escaped? The guest or one of the tenants?”

Clara doesn’t know. She sees shadows, silhouettes, not faces, and the unfortunate result of staking a vampire is turning them into a pool of foul goo.

Stella would have known.

If it had been Clara who had gotten killed, Stella would have found the killer in no time. What would she have done with them? Stella was kind, forgiving. But the brutal murder of her sister would have dimmed those tendencies, or at least so she thinks. At least so she hopes.

What she plans to do once she finds the killer would horrify Stella. But she’s dead, and the dead cannot object.

“We need to find her,” Viago murmurs.

Clara stands by the window and casts a light toward the sky. It zig-zags against the spotted darkness and vanishes in the distance.

“Let’s see where it takes us.”

  


“What time is it? Sorry, I forgot my phone.”

Clara checks her own. “It’s almost two.”

The light had led them to an apartment complex, and they stand outside on what appears to be the world’s most improvised stakeout. Clara picks up some of the energy she felt back in the girls’ flat, but it’s too vague, too dim to lead them to a more concrete location. There’s an undercurrent of fear, but it too is too weak to be traceable. The girl is scared, understandably so. But fear is often isolating.

Viago and his flatmates know a lot of the other vampires living in Wellington, but not all of them. The ones they have spoken with didn’t know the girls well; they had been turned fairly recently, they might be even younger than Nick.

“By whom?” No information. Pop culture has severely overestimated the bond between a vampire and their maker. Petyr and Deacon were friends because they lived together; had Deacon moved out at any point, their relationship would have strained and ultimately disappeared.

“Have you turned anyone into a vampire?”

Viago’s ability to stand perfectly still unnerves her to no end, so she avoids looking in his direction when he does it.

“I haven’t.”

She does like his voice. His mannerisms are, if she’s being kind, endearing. She likes how delicate he seems to be. Maybe not delicate: sweet-tempered. His voice is soft, honeyed. He is always courteous, and has never shot her any suggestive looks, like Vladislav has. Good thing Lydia is working with Nick and not with that one.

“Why not?” She sees him shrugging in her peripheral vision, and decides to seek eye contact.

“Nobody has asked me. If I’d had the choice, I would have declined.”

She can’t help but raise her eyebrows. “You don’t like being a vampire?”

He looks at her and does that thing with his lips that leaves only his fangs visible. “I don’t hate it. It has its perks. But I would have liked living a normal life, then dying.”

“You can always—“ she stops herself just in time. A nasty thing to say, even in jest. Even to a vampire.

“Kill myself?”

 _Shit_. He doesn’t sound appalled, though.

“I was going to say that, but I stopped ‘cause it’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Yes. But I have thought about it. I think we all have, especially as we get older and older. But I don’t hate it that much. Not yet.”

Clara nods. “This is pointless. I’m fucking freezing and this girl could be in any of those flats. I can’t even get a floor. Let’s go home.”

“How does that work? Your witchy thing?”

She smirks. Smirks are all she’s capable of these days. Smirks and semi-amused scoffs.

“Have you seen Star Wars?”

He shakes his head.

“Well, they have this thing called The Force. It’s an energy that binds all living things. It’s something like that. I can harness that energy and use it for different things. Sensing others, for instance. Their intentions, their feelings. I can see past events, if they happened recently.”

“That little light trick you did?”

“Yeah. I can manipulate subatomic particles. Redirect light, move matter, rearrange it, things like that.”

“But the light followed the girl. It followed her… conscience? Her matter?”

Clara closes one eye and scrunches her face. “Her matter. Like that gooey trail snails leave behind. She has a physical connection to that flat, so it followed that. Funny, I didn’t think it was gonna work.”

They had started walking north, toward their side of town.

“What do you mean?”

“Vampires are technically dead, but there’s something that animates you. It’s not life, and I don’t know what it is. It cannot be sensed, but it can be traced. Weird, right?”

Viago looks at her. “You get goosebumps when you’re around me. So you can sense me.”

It should be off-putting that he has noticed that, but Viago is very detail-oriented. “True. But that’s just good ol’ sensory perception, not witchy stuff.”

“And do you like it? Being a witch?”

“I don’t hate it. Not yet.”

Viago smiles, a genuine smile that showcases his small teeth and sharp fangs. Clara looks away, but she suspects that smile will linger in her mind.

When she is able to look in the mirror again, she will practice that smile, trying to emulate it, but she will fail. She lacks Viago’s affable nature. And she lacks the will to smile that genuinely.

They arrive at her flat. “Text me if you get new leads.”

He nods. “Likewise. Good night.”

He walks a few more steps, then turns into a bat. How the hell do they manage to keep their clothes on when they do that?

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, my version of witchcraft is taken from a star war. Oh well ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I took a silly vampire comedy and turned it into a festival of misery. I'm sorry :( 
> 
> Feel free to tell me how dumb this is in the comments :D


End file.
